Adding more memory to 32-bit laptop

Many of us dabble in keeping orphaned systems alive way past their lifetimes.

Isn't the goal to have a system that feels faster?

Yes. And SSDs are one of the best ways to accomplish that.

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IceStorm wrote:

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Is your advice based solely on how a system feels? Does productivity not matter?

In the general case, if someone says their system is slow adding an SSD will typically fix that.

You failed to answer the question. Instead you're back to "feels faster". My G5 is slow at transcoding video. Adding an SSD didn't change that.

No single change will make every task faster. However, SSDs (far and away) provide such a thing for a large majority of cases.

This seems ot be where you're not understanding things. People are saying that an SSD is incredibly helpful for many cases, while you keep talking about the video encoding case. Your single use case does not invalidate all the other cases out there that users hit a normal basis.

Actually, it does. We have data that shows that users are more productive when the system provides them with greater responsiveness. Users get aggravated, distracted, etc. when the system is not keeping up with them.

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The OP asked about a memory upgrade. Yet here we are talking about SSDs as if they're the panacea of slow systems.

Most of the time they are. You keep acting as if the OP's case is something exceptional. But you haven't shown any reason why.

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People act as if I'm clueless to the benefits of SSDs. I get the impression they feel I have no clue as to their benefits. I find that humorous.

You've stated so many things that are wrong (or are unhelpful for this discussion) that it's no surprise that people have that impression of you.

In today's consumer computers, a spinning hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in the system. I see a lot of okay Core 2 Duo and up machines come with hard drives with 5400 to 7200RPM. You can hear these hard drive crunching away. Adding an SSD removes the final bottleneck of the system.

This seems ot be where you're not understanding things. People are saying that an SSD is incredibly helpful for many cases, while you keep talking about the video encoding case. Your single use case does not invalidate all the other cases out there that users hit a normal basis.

I noted that in the previous thread where he talks another load of bollocks too :

His central point, which he refuses to let go of with a frankly rather admirable tenacity, is that apparently an SSD doesn't help with his non-stop, 24/7 video encoding. He apparently uses the machine the SSD is installed in for absolutely nothing else, and neither switches it off or shuts down the video encoding app(s). So since he never, ever does any loading, he concludes that SSDs are worthless across the board.

The OP was looking for advice on adding more memory. And yet again the pro-SSD crew mobilized to push their SSD agenda. The OP feels more memory is the correct solution. So why are we discussing SSDs?

Which "agenda" is this? What do these people have to gain? What is the hidden pitfall?

Those are great questions.

Hat Monster wrote:

You say these words, but you do not know what they mean.

What do you mean?

Hat Monster wrote:

[I oppose the use case of an SSD for the OP's laptop, as I believe the money is better spent elsewhere, namely in getting that 2GB up to 4GB and a proper 64 bit OS on there. By the time we've done this, and bought something like a 160 GB X25, we've spent more than a decent used laptop.

Yep, and the recommendation of a new laptop is the catalyst that started the discussion we now find ourselves in.

Hat Monster wrote:

[I also oppose your ignorant fanaticism. A box of sand has its places, and its uses, as much as platters of spinning glass do. I have around fifteen of those spinny things here, and one box of sand. The box of sand is a pretty old one, very slow and almost completely worn out, but still runs rings around a HDD for things that involve disk thrashing.

I don't care about your statistics as it assume my argument is based on the fact SSDs offer no benefit over traditional hard disks. If you think that's my argument then you haven't been reading, or at the minimum understanding, my argument.

I fully understand and acknowledge SSDs offer quite a number of performance benefits over tradition hard disks. That is undisputed and I am not questioning it. So every stop aruging this strawman.

You have to hand it to reco here. He *is* a master of spinning his own words into pretty much any direction you care to name. He can, however, safely be put on ignore, or just literally ignored.

reco2011 wrote:

I know it's obsolete. That's why I bought newer computers to do the work.

So why do you keep banging on about it then ?

Because it illustrates the point that an old computer with an SSD is not always faster than a new computer with a traditional hard disk. Which is the very statement which I questioned. What I fail to understand is why people continue to challenge me on this given everyone is indirectly saying the same thing when they say the G5 is obsolete...even though it is using an SSD.

In today's consumer computers, a spinning hard drive is the biggest bottleneck in the system. I see a lot of okay Core 2 Duo and up machines come with hard drives with 5400 to 7200RPM. You can hear these hard drive crunching away. Adding an SSD removes the final bottleneck of the system.

Using my video stabilization on the mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro as an example is the hard disk the bottle neck? Or the processor?

If you don't like the G5 example let's discuss the 13" MacBook Pro example.

Ok, let's.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

And your timings please: boot, login to application usable, actual task time including source open and product write-out. I assume you have these data to hand, from a statistically valid number of runs, so could you please post the standard deviations too?

Not that your example usage is likely to be anything but an extreme corner case, but if you publish your method and data we could appreciate more the point you're making, which on its so-far unsubstantiated face is so divergent from our collective experience.

Many of our users do exactly that. Receive an email with a attachment. Open the attachment to review the information, edit it if needed, pass along the results (including a possibly updated doc), and move to the next email. This is a normal business use model. Most business laptops or desktops don't have enough memory to have more than a few applications in memory, so caching of previous applications doesn't come into play.

I've got a lot of clients who open and close applications all the time when switching tasks. They open mail, close it then open a web browser, close it then open Word. Many folks don't quite understand that leaving it minimized isn't going to slow their system down that much or they're just used to doing it that way. It's incredibly common and pointing rarely helps.

Because leaving things opened meant more RAM being used, which led to things getting paged because they had a cheap machine with small amounts of RAM, which meant hard drive crunching since the HDD also was slow, which meant overall slowness. Most of the machines I'm upgrading only have 2GB of RAM, which really isn't a lot for Windows 7 and lots of apps.

Without upgrading the RAM, the effects of paging can be offset by an SSD.

Upgrading the RAM's usually a bit cheaper and will enhance performance way more than an SSD. SSDs are still a thousand (some ten thousand) times slower than RAM is. Paging is a disaster no matter what you're doing it to!

Without upgrading the RAM, the effects of paging can be offset by an SSD.

Yes, I was indeed impressed when I saw this live. At my former job some people got new laptops, nearly maxed out thinkpads. I was helping someone with a bit of setup and thought the system to be snappy, but not quite as much as I would have expected. So I opened up the resource monitor to see what might be bottlenecking them.Yes, they had ordered them with 2GB of RAM. With an i7-QM and 2GB of RAM, in 2012. The SSD did an amazing job of masking that.

If you don't like the G5 example let's discuss the 13" MacBook Pro example.

Ok, let's.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

My workload varies depending on what I need to do. My Mac does not run anti-malware software. My video work is what you expect. Load various video clips, merge them together, add transitions, audio, effects, etc. I may have a few web browsers open but when performing video work I tend to focus on that task. Of course when there's a longer running task I may switch to a web browser, terminal window, etc.

AndyG wrote:

And your timings please: boot, login to application usable, actual task time including source open and product write-out. I assume you have these data to hand, from a statistically valid number of runs, so could you please post the standard deviations too?

I've given these numbers, at least for my five and a half your old Windows 7 system many, many times. Boot time, including typing in my password, is under 60 seconds. Shutdown around 30 seconds. Application launch times, for most applications, about two seconds.

AndyG wrote:

Not that your example usage is likely to be anything but an extreme corner case, but if you publish your method and data we could appreciate more the point you're making, which on its so-far unsubstantiated face is so divergent from our collective experience.

Just the opposite. I feel my use case is typical of the average, as I've already defined, user. And it seems my experience, at least with IE, is not atypical:

With that said I ask you: Should I spend money attempting to minimize startup, shutdown, and application launch times? Or should I spend money attempting to reduce tasks which are performed more than once a day and can take hours to complete?

Without upgrading the RAM, the effects of paging can be offset by an SSD.

Yes, I was indeed impressed when I saw this live. At my former job some people got new laptops, nearly maxed out thinkpads. I was helping someone with a bit of setup and thought the system to be snappy, but not quite as much as I would have expected. So I opened up the resource monitor to see what might be bottlenecking them.Yes, they had ordered them with 2GB of RAM. With an i7-QM and 2GB of RAM, in 2012. The SSD did an amazing job of masking that.

This was another argument I had made. That SSDs may be masking a problem. In this case the systems appear to be memory starved and paging excessively. The SSD was masking the low memory condition.

Or you know, in the case referenced, the hard drive was just fucking slow and I upgraded it. 2GB is kinda on the low end for Windows 7, but I know my systems and users. Any paging that will happen in the event of increased memory usage of Windows 7 vs Windows XP will not be felt.

Lol. You didn't browse those links, did you ? One of them does indeed provide some evidence that SSDs benefit video encoding somewhat - like everything else that requires reading data from a disk, the SSDs are decently faster at doing so,

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How many times do I have to repeat myself:

I do not question that SSDs offer benefits over traditional hard disks. Stop arguing this strawman

Odd how everyone seems to get that impression from you, though, isn't it ?

And speaking of strawmen, awesome way you avoided specifically answering any of AndyG's questions there. <golf clap>

If you don't like the G5 example let's discuss the 13" MacBook Pro example.

Ok, let's.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

My workload varies depending on what I need to do. My Mac does not run anti-malware software. My video work is what you expect. Load various video clips, merge them together, add transitions, audio, effects, etc. I may have a few web browsers open but when performing video work I tend to focus on that task. Of course when there's a longer running task I may switch to a web browser, terminal window, etc.

Does not properly answer the question, but thanks for trying.

reco2011 wrote:

AndyG wrote:

And your timings please: boot, login to application usable, actual task time including source open and product write-out. I assume you have these data to hand, from a statistically valid number of runs, so could you please post the standard deviations too?

I've given these numbers, at least for my five and a half your old Windows 7 system many, many times. Boot time, including typing in my password, is under 60 seconds. Shutdown around 30 seconds. Application launch times, for most applications, about two seconds.

I don't think I've seen you give the numbers I asked for. Could you provide or link them here?

To be completely clear, the numbers for both the SSD and HDD. For the G5 not this Win7 box you now mention.

reco2011 wrote:

AndyG wrote:

Not that your example usage is likely to be anything but an extreme corner case, but if you publish your method and data we could appreciate more the point you're making, which on its so-far unsubstantiated face is so divergent from our collective experience.

Just the opposite. I feel my use case is typical of the average, as I've already defined, user. And it seems my experience, at least with IE, is not atypical:

With that said I ask you: Should I spend money attempting to minimize startup, shutdown, and application launch times? Or should I spend money attempting to reduce tasks which are performed more than once a day and can take hours to complete?

You clearly shouldn't do anything. You are happy with the performance you have.

In the general case, a person unhappy with the slow feel and/or performance of any machine from ~C2D up that has a HDD and 2GB RAM, who is looking for upgrade advice, should replace the HDD with an SSD.

Exceptions are not uncommon, but this is still the best advice in most cases.

In the general case, a person unhappy with the slow feel and/or performance of any machine from ~C2D up that has a HDD and 2GB RAM, who is looking for upgrade advice, should replace the HDD with an SSD.

I put an SSD into a laptop with an old Core (not Core2) processor, and it felt like a new system. My use pattern was similar to a normal business system (low CPU use, lot's of programs being run). For this particular use pattern (I believe it's the largest single use pattern in computers - look at the number of desktop/laptop computers in business; the majority of them have this use pattern).

My point here is that sometimes, lower-end systems can also reap significant benefits from an SSD, depending on your use pattern.

In the general case, a person unhappy with the slow feel and/or performance of any machine from ~C2D up that has a HDD and 2GB RAM, who is looking for upgrade advice, should replace the HDD with an SSD.

I put an SSD into a laptop with an old Core (not Core2) processor, and it felt like a new system. My use pattern was similar to a normal business system (low CPU use, lot's of programs being run). For this particular use pattern (I believe it's the largest single use pattern in computers - look at the number of desktop/laptop computers in business; the majority of them have this use pattern).

My point here is that sometimes, lower-end systems can also reap significant benefits from an SSD, depending on your use pattern.

Oh, sure, absolutely. ~C2D wasn't in any sense meant as a hard lower bound (hence the ~) for whether performance picks up dramatically, and I strongly suspect that any proper testing on a normal business workload would show that even a G5 is appreciably faster with a SSD than with a HDD. It was more that ~C2D would be the normal lower bound for whether, in the general case, I'd recommend someone should replace the HDD with an SSD rather than replace the whole machine.

Lol. You didn't browse those links, did you ? One of them does indeed provide some evidence that SSDs benefit video encoding somewhat - like everything else that requires reading data from a disk, the SSDs are decently faster at doing so,

I checked them out. I assume you're referring to the first link and I went straight to the "Video Transcoding" section where I could find nothing to show an decrease in transcoding time due to the SSD. All I found were some stats which, without a reference, prove nothing. The second and third links were references to SSD performance on gaming and the fourth link a reference about the general benefits of SSDs (and a look at the ToC did not show any transcoding listed). If you've got something you want me to look at the point it out. Don't expect me to wade through four links and pages and pages of unrelated material to find your supporting material.

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How many times do I have to repeat myself:

I do not question that SSDs offer benefits over traditional hard disks. Stop arguing this strawman

ChrisG wrote:

Odd how everyone seems to get that impression from you, though, isn't it ?

It is. It tells me people are so quick to push their agenda they're not listening to what I'm saying. Either that or they're arguing just for the sake of arguing. I'd like to give these people the benefit of the doubt for the former rather than the latter.

ChrisG wrote:

And speaking of strawmen, awesome way you avoided specifically answering any of AndyG's questions there. <golf clap>

This was another argument I had made. That SSDs may be masking a problem. In this case the systems appear to be memory starved and paging excessively. The SSD was masking the low memory condition.

Continuing to flog the expired equine:

But when you say "masking" you really mean that it makes a system that has a problem with RAM act like it doesn't...and you are implying that is bad...

No, what I am saying is you're not addressing the real problem. Avoiding paging is preferable to paging to a device which masks it.

Zaphod wrote:

While I would agree that adding RAM is a preferable when RAM deficiency is the root cause it is not always possible, for example in a laptop (which is what this thread concerns...).

We agree here. This is a use case where an SSD could pay real dividends because it makes the computer faster, not just feel faster.

Zaphod wrote:

So that thing you have a problem with is actually a very very good thing in some cases.

Two stramen in this statement. Again I don't have any problems with SSDs. My "problem" is with people's attitude that they're the panacea for slow computers. As my G5 example shows they're not. While this computer (yes, I'm using it to compose this) feels snappy it isn't any faster at getting work (video transcoding, Word, Excel, e-mail, etc) done. So while it feels fast I think we can all agree it isn't fast. The second strawman is the your belief I feel there are no cases where an SSD would benefit. I have never held that position and I don't see why people continue to make this strawman.

You guys keep recommending Ferraris (SSD) to people who can just as easily get by with a minivan (traditional HD). One cannot deny the Ferrari's superior performance to that of a minivan. Almost every performance metric for the Ferrari is superior to that of the minivan. But in the end does the average user, who is running errands throughout the day, benefit from the superior performance of the Ferrari? I say they do not. If the performance of the Ferrari came with no downside to the minivan then clearly it would be the logical choice. But it does...so its benefits need to be weighed against its negatives. And, IMO, having a faster 0-60 time so you can get to the next stop light faster is of little benefit to the average person.

If you don't like the G5 example let's discuss the 13" MacBook Pro example.

Ok, let's.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

My workload varies depending on what I need to do. My Mac does not run anti-malware software. My video work is what you expect. Load various video clips, merge them together, add transitions, audio, effects, etc. I may have a few web browsers open but when performing video work I tend to focus on that task. Of course when there's a longer running task I may switch to a web browser, terminal window, etc.

If you don't like the G5 example let's discuss the 13" MacBook Pro example.

Ok, let's.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

My workload varies depending on what I need to do. My Mac does not run anti-malware software. My video work is what you expect. Load various video clips, merge them together, add transitions, audio, effects, etc. I may have a few web browsers open but when performing video work I tend to focus on that task. Of course when there's a longer running task I may switch to a web browser, terminal window, etc.

Could you help us see by posting hardware and software specs, settings and workflow details if it's not just boot, login, stabilise 1 video, shutdown - particularly what else you're doing at the same time (background e.g. antivirus and any active multitasking).

And your timings please: boot, login to application usable, actual task time including source open and product write-out. I assume you have these data to hand, from a statistically valid number of runs, so could you please post the standard deviations too?

Not that your example usage is likely to be anything but an extreme corner case, but if you publish your method and data we could appreciate more the point you're making, which on its so-far unsubstantiated face is so divergent from our collective experience.

So, you replied with

Hardware spec: 0Software spec: 0Software settings: 0Workflow details: 1What else you're doing at the time: 1Average boot time with HDD: 0Standard deviation for boot time with HDD: 0Average boot time with SSD: 0Standard deviation for boot time with SSD: 0Average time from login to application usable, with HDD: 0Standard deviation for time from login to application usable, with HDD: 0Average time from login to application usable, with SSD: 0Standard deviation for time from login to application usable, with SSD: 0Average actual task time including source open and product write-out, with HDD: 0Standard deviation for actual task time including source open and product write-out, with HDD: 0Average actual task time including source open and product write-out, with SSD: 0Standard deviation for actual task time including source open and product write-out, with SSD: 0

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reco2011 wrote:

ChrisG wrote:

And speaking of strawmen, awesome way you avoided specifically answering any of AndyG's questions there. <golf clap>

His questions were answered.

Technically, this is not untrue: my questions were answered - 2 of them, which is plural, but you did completely avoid addressing--much less specifically answering--88% of my questions there, which were the ones that called for numerical data as answers.

In the general case, when someone won't answer such a question, either they don't have the data or it doesn't support their position. Not saying we're not in the realm of an extreme corner case here, of course

to people who can just as easily get by with a minivan (traditional HD).

Hard disks aren't minivans.

Your analogy is pointless, as is allowing this thread to continue running in circles. We've mentioned your G5 isn't relevant to the discussion, yet you still bring it up. We've mentioned the general case, yet you continue to tilt at windmills using your own corner cases.

If you want to discuss your own problems with SSDs, start another thread.